


all long for it, fewer find it

by ncfan



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slice of Life, Utterly self-indulgent fluff, and I will write self-indulgent fluff if I want to, because it's a new year and a new decade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22190443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: All the snow made Arkham look almost picturesque, for all that it wasArkhamand was thusly about as picturesque as a graveyard. The cold was less inviting, though while Herbert was still acting so gloomy, Stephen could think of a few uses for it.
Relationships: Narrator (Herbert West - Reanimator)/Herbert West
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	all long for it, fewer find it

The weather this December was, in a sense, actually rather pleasant. Oh, the cold was especially bitter this year. Stephen had endured many, much harsher winters in Chicago, but there was something about the cold in Arkham that sank its hooks into him more easily and more deeply than even the blizzards he’d lived through as a child could claim. And in this winter of 1904, the cold sank deeper and the snowfall rose higher than any other winter Stephen had lived through in Arkham. But when blanketed in glittering white snow, the landscape looked to his eyes remarkably benign. Even when that snow was muddied with footprints and wheel tracks, when swathed in several inches of snow, Arkham and the surrounding countryside looked…

He didn’t know. Not exactly. It didn’t look like itself, and that, perhaps, was enough.

(It might have been picturesque, but Stephen didn’t know about that, either. ‘Picturesque’ was not a term he would have ever cared to apply to this place—it was just a little too normal.)

In a sense, the winter was pleasant, though by all objective measures it was inhospitable both to man and beast. That it was such as it was was inviting other difficulties. And the mood was not nearly as pleasant as the weather.

“How did you do on your exams?”

Mrs. Ashworth’s Tea and Lunch was a tiny tea room on the ground floor of someone’s—Mrs. Ashworth, Stephen would think, except he’d never seen a woman by that name in the place—house, furnished with plain, hard-backed Colonial-era chairs and set with even plainer Colonial-era tables, though the fact that none of the tables were ever broken when they came in put it at a step above the public house. The wallpaper was a pale, powdery shade of blue that despite its muted shade still managed to be the most brightly-colored shade of wallpaper Stephen had ever seen in Arkham, and it was invariably deserted when they entered, which he suspected was half the appeal for Herbert.

The other half of the appeal would have to be that the proprietor, the fabled Mrs. Ashworth or whoever was in charge of this place, didn’t let the patrons smoke. Ruined the atmosphere, she said. Ruined the wallpaper, she said, and that, Stephen could well believe; wallpaper such a delicate shade of blue probably discolored if daylight glanced at it wrong. Herbert had started complaining about getting headaches off of the smoke clouds in the public house about a year after their acquaintance had begun, and the admission had only confirmed what Stephen had suspected from the pinched pallor of his face after they would exit that place.

Personally, Stephen preferred the heavier food he could have gotten from the public house to the fare here, but he had little interest in giving Herbert yet another headache to deal with. He would sooner avoid anything that caused pain, if he could.

Though something like it had found them, nonetheless.

“Hmm?” Herbert tore his gaze from the window, but only minutely, so that Stephen was met with a sliver’s gleam of blue, and no more. “Oh, fine. I’m certain they would all have loved an excuse to send me packing. I wasn’t inclined to give them one.” He tilted his head away from the window and down, focusing all of his attention on his half-empty teacup. “And you?”

“Fine.” He felt as if he had swallowed all of his textbooks, and that the only result was that he could regurgitate half-finished answers that gave Stephen a nagging feeling of wrongness, but he’d somehow managed to fool his professors into believing he had retained all of the information taught to him. He’d take that for what it was, and not neglect his reading during the break. Stephen tilted his head, trying without much success to catch Herbert’s eye as he flashed him a smile. “I’m not getting kicked out, either, so I guess you’re stuck with me.”

No retort, no sharp-tongued, sarcastic retaliatory shot. He didn’t even roll his eyes. Instead, Herbert just kept on staring out of the windows, right hand resting stock-still on the table and the left out of sight beneath the edge of the table, and was silent. Maybe he was just preoccupied watching the translucent snow flurries drift to the ground, but Stephen had never known him to take that much interest in snow, except to curse its chill and how it melted quickly to seep through every last chink in his boots.

What Stephen was left with was a dining partner who had sunk into stillness. Herbert had many sorts of stillness, easily discerned if you paid close enough attention. There was the stillness of contemplation, lips pursed and arms folded across his narrow chest. There was the stillness of uncertainty, all knit brow and tense shoulders. There was the stillness of anger, when fury took hold of him so completely that he no longer vibrated with his rage, but sank into an almost reptilian calm, where he held all of his anger in the rigid line of his mouth and the brightness of his eyes. There was the stillness of fatigue, when the only sign Herbert would give of tiredness was how he no longer held his head as straight as he would otherwise have done.

This was a stillness Stephen had not seen often before. Maybe three or four at the very most, and this time, he thought, might be the first time he had been able to guess at the source of it. Of course, this was the longest he’d ever seen Herbert stay in such a state. That helped.

As he reached for his rapidly-cooling teacup, Stephen bit back a sigh. Doubtful as it was that Herbert was paying him any real mind, he’d rather not risk it. He needed a minute to think, and better to do that without scrutiny.

Why it had never occurred to Stephen that there might be people their age drifting around Arkham whom Herbert was actually on good terms with, he did not know. For all that his relationship with the vast majority of the student body of the medical school was less than sanguine, Herbert had been a child here (Or somewhere nearby here; what little information Stephen had managed to glean painted a picture that was somewhat less than clear). It was a rare child indeed who had absolutely no friends to speak of growing up, and it was inevitable that, if those friends happened to still be living in the area as adults, they might want to maintain or reestablish contact. Especially if two childhood friends, now adults, happened to be attending the same medical school.

Would that Stephen could have been this clear-headed about it when such would have actually been _relevant_. But when one of those probably-childhood-friends had emerged from the ether and begun attending school with them this fall, he had not been clear-headed about it. Not even remotely.

Looking back on it, there had been nothing objectionable about Morgan’s character, what little of it Stephen had managed to retain past the haze of jealousy, cycling into guilt and embarrassment, cycling back into jealousy, he had occupied that entire month and a half Morgan had been around. He could remember nothing that had stood out to him as deficient, or worrying, or even objectively annoying. If he had been clear-headed about it, and put in the slightest effort towards amiability, they likely would have become friends fairly quickly.

At best, however, Stephen had spent those scant weeks Morgan had spent in their company regarding him as a nuisance, and at worst…

The thoughts did not bear dwelling on. (They were not alone here, even if they were the only patrons currently occupying the shop. Something would show in his face, or the set of his shoulders, or _something_ , something that would give him away, leave him exposed and flayed-open for scrutiny and ridicule.)

And no longer did it matter. Barely a month and a half after Morgan had approached Herbert in the hall after class one day, barely a month and a half after Stephen found the privacy of their company broken in on by someone it took every ounce of his restraint not to immediately name ‘rival’ and then only ever think of in such terms, Morgan was gone.

Oh, physically speaking, he was still around. This being Morgan’s first year of medical school, he and Stephen didn’t have any of the same classes, but Stephen still caught sight of him on campus from time to time. On these occasions, Morgan never spoke to him, nor so much as made eye contact, and though Stephen had not been really trying all that hard to elicit his attention, he still got a very pointed impression of just what Morgan was trying to convey.

He wasn’t sure what had happened. Something while he wasn’t present, most likely—Herbert and Morgan had talked alone often enough during that stretch of time when two had temporarily, agonizingly become three. Stephen did not know what had happened. He was not sure he wished to _know_ what had happened. And in the end, it didn’t matter much, what had happened. It was done.

Except it wasn’t, considering the way Herbert had been acting since that sudden abandonment.

(In the beginning, he thought, briefly, that he might have been happy for such a conclusion. He knew better, now.)

At some point during the reverie, Stephen’s gaze had strayed to Herbert’s face. Once upon a time, he’d caught himself doing that at odd moments and not thought much of it. Nowadays, if he was not deliberately looking at something else, when in Herbert’s presence, Stephen had to fight to keep looking anywhere that wasn’t at him. _If anything’s going to give me away_ , he mused ruefully, _it’s going to be that_.

Nowadays, things were like that, and that on top of Herbert’s own present malaise meant that sometimes, he didn’t take notice of Stephen looking quite as quickly as would otherwise have been the case. But he did eventually take notice—that much was as inevitable as the sun rising in the east every morning, sometimes at inconveniently early hours.

Herbert drew a quiet breath, not quite a sigh: “You told me you were going back to your family this year, did you not?”

“Yes.” The arrangement had been made before all of this started. If Stephen thought for one moment that there was a single way for him to explain things to his family in such a way as would not result in exposure, he suspected he would have canceled his plans and stayed here. Arkham had few attractions in the winter, especially compared to Chicago, but it might have been a little easier on his mind to just stay here.

“When are you leaving?”

The sun chose just that moment to let loose a few rays of light from behind a lazily drifting cloud, making distractingly fine work of Herbert’s cheekbones and the arch of his brows. _For God’s sake, try not to stare like a lecher for five minutes_. “Four days.” Stephen snorted as he remembered the last letter he got from his mother. “My uncle and my cousins are in town, and I’ve been advised not to show up until after they’ve left if I want to get by without a broken nose or a concussion. My aunt doesn’t let any of them drink at home,” he added, “so they enjoy themselves too much away from it.”

“Hmm.” Herbert downed the stone-cold contents of his teacup, grimaced, and then poured a fresh cup of what could have only been lukewarm tea, at best. “Well,” he said quietly, “be careful.”

And that was it. No questions, no quizzically raised eyebrow, not even a comment on the strength of the booze. (Stephen might have been exaggerating his uncle and cousins’ behavior just a _bit_ , just to try and garner a reaction.)

Stephen was, frankly, tired of pretending at blindness. However necessary slanted sight had proven to be in Arkham, he did not think total blindness suited him, no more than ignoring the evidence of his own eyes.

“Are you alright?” he asked lowly, reaching out his hand before he quite knew what he was doing, ending up awkwardly prodding the back of Herbert’s hand with his fingertips. “You…” It was such a chore to find something to say that wouldn’t have been too revealing. “You haven’t been yourself for a while, now.”

In stark contrast to the near-sluggishness that had characterized him these past days, Herbert jerked noticeably when Stephen touched his hand. He blinked rapidly—even the gray winter light could be dazzling, if set against the gloom of a dim room. The space that a potential reply could have inhabited was filled with the prickling silence of a dim, chilly room, for so long that Stephen began to wonder if he would receive any reply at all.

Herbert sighed. On the exhale, in a low voice: “I hate winter. The cold creeps into my bones, and through the cracks in the windows; I can’t even find warmth when I try to sleep. The ground is frozen solid—“ his mouth contorted in a spasm of frustration that had become to Stephen as familiar as the sun in the morning sky “—and this year, the snow falls so thick I have to wade through it just to get to the street. My only consolation is that it will eventually be _over_.”

Now, it was Stephen’s turn to blink. Herbert could talk in expansive terms; Stephen had been around him for long enough to know that it was hardly as if such was _beyond_ him. It was just what, when it came to what gave him discomfort, terseness usually ruled the day. And still… First scanning the back of the room for any glimmer of prying eyes (and then wondering at their having been left along so long), he replied, in just as low a voice (that still managed to be uncomfortably loud to his own ears), “Is… that it, then?”

If the sudden confidence had thrown Stephen, it would seem his response to it had thrown Herbert even more. Herbert stiffened (and for how visibly he stiffened, in comparison to his typical posture, Stephen was mildly surprised not to hear bones crackling), his face coloring slightly. “ _Yes_ , I know there’s no helping it. There’s nothing to do but wait for spring to come; I just wish there wasn’t quite as _much_ —“

His voice was pitching higher with every syllable, loud enough by the end that Stephen was glancing nervously towards the back door. Somewhat abashed, he decided to just cut the stream of words off before they could attract the attention of the people in the adjacent buildings. He clapped his hand down on Herbert’s shoulder; the almost clumsy roughness of the gesture carried with it not awkwardness, no whispering suggestion of intimacy. “Alright, so you don’t have much use for winter.” He tried for a smile—encouraging, preferably, and disarming, _please_. “A lot of people don’t. Do you really want to just sit around and wait for spring?”

Herbert rolled his eyes, and the _normalcy_ of the gesture was enough to reassure Stephen, if only somewhat. “I see no other option. There’s no work that can be done until the ground thaws, and there’s nothing I particularly want to do out in—“ he gestured discontentedly towards the window, hand slashing the air in two “— _that_.”

With the confidence of a man who’d been checking the mercury every day for the past several days, watching it drop lower and lower, and the greater confidence of a man who’d already tested things himself, Stephen gave Herbert’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and smiled again. “You ever tried ice skating?”

-0-0-0-

The thing about it was, Herbert wouldn’t have been able to work even if the ground hadn’t been frozen to the point of impenetrability (Except perhaps by dynamite, but they neither had access to dynamite nor any inclination to _use_ it). Judging by his performance when they’d shifted the corpse of the workman, there was no way he’d be able to transport a corpse _anywhere_ under his own, sole power without either being discovered at his work or having to simply abandon it. Besides that, they no longer had anywhere safe to conduct experiments.

And the notes…

They were still trying to reconstruct the notes. Stephen cringed every time he thought about it; they’d had enough to fill three notebooks, and all of it had gone down in flames with the Chapman house. Anyone else would have taken that as a sign, quite possibly from God Himself, that they should just halt the enterprise entirely, and Herbert had indeed sunk into a deep, self-recriminating depression for the first several days after the fire.

(Stephen could remember trying to coax Herbert to eat something. He could remember having to practically drag Herbert to class. That first, kneejerk reaction had been to blame himself for not thinking to grab the notes before they left, but then he’d just… gone docile, and silent, so silent. Become something like a doll given life, but not granted a mouth that could move, or eyes that could spark with life. Stephen half-expected him to just…

He did not know what he expected. Anything seemed possible. He could have vanished in the first light of morning like the shadow of a dream. How often had their shared studies, the sweet taste of victory over death, however fleeting, seemed the product of a dream? Herbert could have been part of the dream, as well—a fantasy concocted by a heart that yearned for so many disparate things that only a fantasy could fulfill them all.

Sometimes, Stephen really did think he was going to wake up the following morning and discover that all of this had been a dream. He was always grateful when he woke up, and what had seemed so dreamlike remained anchored in the waking world.)

After those few hours of self-recrimination, and then those several days bricked up with blank silence, Herbert had remembered himself, or simply found the voice with which to express what he’d been certain of all along, and made it clear that even if this _was_ a sign from God Himself, they would not be deterred by any setback. They were both in possession of excellent memories, he said, they had both read over the notes so many times that they could practically recite large sections of them by the time of the fire, and the notes could be reconstructed.

But that had been slow going, hadn’t it been? They had had their coursework to contend with—every new day just seemed to add another foot of dirt to the mountain they were trying to scramble over to reach the finish line. It was pointless to focus on the experiments to the exclusion of what would allow them the continued ability to _advance_ what they’d already accomplished. And besides, Herbert remarked, on the off-chance that this was finished within either of their lifespans, they’d still need to work after it was done if they wanted a roof over their heads.

Something else had come up, as well.

Their coursework made it impossible for them to meet every day to try to reconstruct the notes. That much had become obvious entirely too quickly. What else had become obvious entirely too quickly was that neither of them could get very far trying to reconstruct the notes by themselves. The few times Stephen had tried, he had wound up staring infuriatedly at sheets of paper as the words just would not come. He wracked his brains over and over again, and though he could remember generalities, the specifics escaped him. Herbert, fury and mortification engraved in his skin like old scars ripped open and freshly bleeding, confirmed an essentially identical experience.

Whatever mad alchemy had spurred them to what they had achieved by the time of the fire, of that, that _scream_ , as best as either of them could tell, it could only be summoned forth when they worked in tandem. Regardless of the state of the ground, if Herbert tried to work on the notes while Stephen was away, Stephen was unfortunately quite confident that all that would come of it would be the same sort of infuriated staring he had enjoyed while he tried, ensconced in his dormitory, to call from memory words and formulae that just wouldn’t _come_.

Stephen did wonder what Herbert was going to do once Stephen boarded that train and headed back to Chicago. _Does he visit family for Christmas?_ he thought to himself, as they trudged down a path distinguishable in the thick snow only by the absence of trees in it. _I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about his family._

Stephen chanced a look behind him. Herbert had been silent since they stepped off the main road, as ever quiet and decidedly subdued under the canopy (admittedly rather sparse at this time of year, for all that the forests belting Arkham were thick with pines) of the trees. Fair enough; Stephen himself had always felt as though, at least when he was _here_ , that the trees themselves were discouraging of speech. Hard enough as it was not to give in to fantasy and consider that everything that had ever been imagined was real, at least when he was here, he sometimes entertained the thought that the trees themselves watched what he did. And still, in light of all that, Herbert’s sheer quiet, the quiet of burying everything in the mind far away from the surface, from observation, seemed unnatural.

 _He grew up here—or near here_ , Stephen reminded himself, as he often did when Herbert’s reaction to something local struck Stephen as odd, or unlike him. _And everyone else gets quiet in the forests. Even I do._

_You would think, that if he has family living outside of Arkham, he’d jump at the chance to get out of here for a few days to go see them._

There were many things Stephen did not know about Herbert West, the gaps in his knowledge most likely stemming from the agitated, almost-stammering deflections Herbert had woven into the air the few times Stephen had ever pressed for information. Whatever he might have contemplated of the things he did not know vanished from his mind when Herbert finally took notice of the glances being sent back his way, meeting Stephen’s gaze with a questioning look.

“How much further, now?”

“About half a mile.”

Herbert snorted, a silvery puff of air shivering in front of his mouth. “This is a waste of time, you know? I’m sure you have more important things you could be doing with your time than spending the afternoon tempting the ice to break under your feet. As do I.”

It was a refrain of the argument that Herbert had put forth as they were walking on the side of the road, before they’d stepped under the canopy of these suffocating trees. It was, in fact, a refrain of the argument that Herbert had aired when Stephen arrived at the Caldwell’s house to lead him to their destination, and Stephen could only do now what he’d done then. He rolled his eyes, and kept right on walking. “You say that, Herbert, and yet, you’re still _following me_.”

Under Stephen’s half-amused, half-exasperated eye, Herbert shrugged, a gesture that tried to be casual and completely failed at that, for the very simple reason that it was Herbert, who took to casualness the way a cat took to water—occasionally, once in a blue moon, the two points would meet, but it was usually more a case of ‘and never shall the twain meet.’ “Yes, well, who else would go for help if you actually fell through the ice?”

It was all he could do not to laugh, the tone was so artificially disinterested. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be more concerned about yourself? You’re the one who’s never done this before.”

“If the ice isn’t as solid as you think it is, you’re more likely to go through than I am.”

_And if I push you up against that oak tree ahead of us, and stop your mouth, how long before you’re completely unconcerned about how solid the ice will be?_

Thoughts were chased out by images and imagined sensations, were chased out by the prickling, very present sensation of being watched. Stephen had never known any pleasure, real or imagined, that could persist in that pervasive miasma of observation. Perhaps these trees possessed eyes, after all. Hidden, invisible to the eyes of men, and completely indelible.

Certain things were best relegated to dreams, to realms that prying eyes could not reach. Stephen focused his gaze firmly on the path ahead of him, and counted himself grateful that the frigid air could provide him with an excuse for the red heat coloring his face. (Still better not to let Herbert see it.)

Stephen greeted the break in the trees with relief, and the complete absence of people milling around Sumner’s Pond sent relief worming its way all the way down into his heart. The specter of observation by those who could have carried tales all the way back to Arkham might well have made Herbert balk, and that…

Not the end of the world, maybe. Not what Stephen was trying to accomplish, certainly.

Herbert had come to stand beside him. He regarded the pond, an irregularly-shaped sheet of silver-gray ice sunken into the earth beneath them, and pursed his lips. “This… is the pond we got the workman from, isn’t it?”

“That’d be the one, yeah.”

A huff of a breath, about as close as Herbert ever came to genuine laughter, quivered in the air before being swallowed by the snowy silence that pressed in on them. “Alright.” The look Herbert pinned him with was half-questioning, half-challenging. “What do I need to do now?”

Somehow, it didn’t surprise Stephen that Herbert had never been ice skating before. It had taken him long enough to find two pairs of blades for Stephen to get the impression that it just wasn’t something that was done very often in Arkham. Which, again, didn’t surprise Stephen in the slightest: quite frankly, this was the place that fun forgot.

He wasn’t surprised by any of this, and thus, it was easy to remember why it was so important to keep his voice even, to not give in to the temptation to tease when he saw the know-it-all at such an obvious loss. (And not question at Herbert’s continued compliance, in the face of everything else he could have been spending the day doing.) Their fingers fumbled on laces in the cold. Herbert’s hands trembled under his, despite his thick gloves. (Cloth on cloth stripped any intimacy from the gesture, or so Stephen felt for the first few moments, until he realized he could feel the bones in the back of Herbert’s hands, and heat flooded back into his face.)

“Alright,” Stephen said, once they were both out on the ice. “Just try to keep your balance.”

Herbert did laugh this time, the high-pitched jitter that ever took the place of genuine, joyful laughter in his mouth. “How long has it been since you last did this?”

“Yesterday, Herbert.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I mean, on a regular basis.”

“A few years ago.”

He had loved this as a child, though it had taken a while for his balance to match his joy, and Stephen was _never_ going to pretend he was as deft as the ballerinas who’d liked to practice on the ice during the winter. He’d never really had enough time for it when he would come home from school for Christmas, but the things he’d learned as a child were too deeply ingrained to ever truly be forgotten. Herbert could doubt all he liked, but Stephen remembered it all.

And doubt, he would. “Have you ever taught someone else before?”

Now, Stephen laughed. “No, but it’s not complicated, Herbert, trust me.”

Slowly, deliberately, so that Herbert could watch the way, Stephen skated some twenty feet away from the shore and bit back a sigh when he saw how very, very stiffly Herbert stood, beyond his normal stiffness and verging into something frankly statue-like. His natural stillness served him well here, but Stephen couldn’t shake the impression of a sapling fit to be ripped out by the roots at the slightest gust of wind.

“Just try to come over here. Don’t rush,” Stephen warned, as Herbert began to move.

“There isn’t going to be any rushing,” Herbert muttered. His legs wobbled like Stephen thought a newborn fawn’s might, when it was taking its very first steps—almost bonelessly unstable, giving the impression of legs made of jelly. “If I manage to get through this day without breaking my skull on the ice, I’ll count that a miracle.”

Stephen held out a hand as Herbert painstakingly drew closer. He was trying to walk on the blades as if they were ordinary shoe soles, but Stephen thought he’d realize the error soon enough. “You don’t believe in miracles.”

Herbert paused in his slow progress across the ice. “…No, I don’t. So I suppose I _will_ be breaking my skull today.”

“I’m not going to let you break your skull.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to—“

Herbert had _not_ learned better about how to move on the blades, and now, it had caught up to him. Stephen swooped forward and caught him by his elbows before that error could involve a pratfall. “Are you sure?” he asked, discarding any concern about the effects of teasing and going for it without reserve. “Are you very sure?”

Herbert stared at him for a long moment, visibly tensing, before he let out a long breath and let out all the—extra—tension. “Apparently not.”

Whatever the concession might have been worth, Stephen would take it. “Like I said, I am not gonna let you get hurt. Just… You’re not using the blades properly. You’re supposed to glide on the blades, not walk on them as if they’re normal shoes.”

“Glide,” Herbert repeated under his breath, looking off to the side. His expression was almost grim, and at the sight of it, Stephen had to bite back another laugh. “Alright.”

Herbert shook Stephen’s hands from his elbows and tried to do as instructed, and just looking at the set of his jaw as he did so, Stephen was starting to gain some understanding of why Herbert was out here at all. Oh, Mister Know-it-all did _not_ care for the insinuation that there was something he simply could not do, not at all.

Stephen tried to remember if that sort of attitude had ever come into play when he was picking up ice skating as a child. Upon reflection, he did not think it had. It had for his older brother, when he was confronted with something the younger could do and he couldn’t. How had that gone for Andrew?

Herbert’s legs tried to shoot out from under him once more, and Stephen suddenly remembered _exactly_ how that had gone for Andrew.

“I’d tell you falling is a natural part of learning,” Stephen said laughingly as he caught Herbert’s elbows again, “but we’re too far from Arkham for me to carry you back if you really do crack your skull out here.”

“What makes you think I’m going to fall?” Herbert asked tetchily.

“Besides the evidence of my own eyes?” Herbert scowled, and Stephen smiled in response. “Everybody falls over when they’re starting out at this.” Even the ballerinas he’d spent hours watching as a seven-year-old had occasionally fallen flat on their faces, usually when they were picking up speed. “Like I said, we’re too far from Arkham for you to be cracking your skull on the ice.” Laughingly, he added, “And if you broke your glasses, they might just take _me_ back to Arkham in a pine box.”

“That’s hyperbolic.”

“This is _you_ we’re speaking of.”

“Huh." Herbert shook himself free again, taking a few tentative glides across the ice. For a moment, his movements were almost graceful, until his legs began to wobble once more. “The walk back to Arkham _would_ be quite tedious, if I couldn’t see any of it. It would just be a wall of white, and another wall of gray.” He snorted. “That sounds like some of our classrooms; _ugh_ , I wouldn’t want to have to wander around that, especially if I didn’t know where I was going.”

Stephen was paying closer attention to whether or not Herbert’s legs were wobbling than he was to Herbert’s face. “What, you think I wouldn’t lead you back? Hell, I’d probably be holding your hand the whole time to make sure I didn’t lose track of you.”

For however little it might be worth, the words had been spoken in jest, with little thought put in to them. They were out of his mouth before he had really realized what he was saying at all. It might have been fair to suppose that Herbert would treat the words with the same level of seriousness that Stephen had treated them with while he was actually saying them.

Herbert, who did occasionally like to subvert expectations, paused, looking at Stephen oddly, eyes poring over his face as if he expected to find something written in cold-chafed skin.

Their eyes locked for a long moment, the searching quality of Herbert’s gaze in no way diminished. Stephen felt his face begin to grow warm for what felt like the tenth time this afternoon, for now, he really did feel as there were words etched into his skin—visible to one person alone, but to that one person, as stark as the sun in the sky on a cloudless day.

The prospect of exposure in such a manner struck Stephen as it always did, balancing in the narrow, nauseating edge between terror and anticipation. _I know, I’ve seen—_

And then, Herbert lost his balance for a third time, and Stephen moved forward without any thought in his head but keeping him from falling.

Herbert’s gloved hands clutched tightly at Stephen’s coat sleeves at the same moment that Stephen’s hands went to Herbert’s waist to steady him, and a high-pitched, jumpy noise scrabbled up Stephen’s throat, just barely caged in his mouth. Herbert stared down at the ice, breathing hard, leaving Stephen with only a view of the top of his pale head. His fingers dug into Stephen’s upper arms, the left hand at Stephen’s right elbow, the right close to Stephen’s left shoulder. Dull points of pain barely noticeable in the numbing cold throbbed under the clenching fingertips.

Unable to think of anything else to say, Stephen softly asked, “Are you alright?” The body held in his hands shook slightly, but the tremor did not feel like anything born from cold.

Faintly, “Fine.” Herbert took a harsh, shuddering breath. Without ever lifting his head, he muttered, “Why… why do this?”

And there it was. _I want to spend time with you that isn’t spent working. I want to see you smile._ “Have you stopped thinking about everything you can’t do right now?” _Have you stopped thinking about what you’ve lost, what opportunities have passed you by?_

Herbert gave him an almost incredulous look, shot through with something close to exhaustion and something else that Stephen couldn’t identify in that fleeting look, before ducking his head back down. “I… Hmm.” Another huffing breath, tinted with the pale ghost of laughter. “Yes.”

“Then my work here is done,” Stephen replied cheerfully. “Do you want to stay here longer?”

For what could be found when they were alone, away from people with watchful eyes, out from under the canopy of watchful trees, Stephen might have stayed here until the ice beneath their feet began to thaw and the pond grew dark, watery eyes with which to watch them as well. But cold would drive them both away from here eventually, and Stephen would just have to take what little he could get, where he could find it.

“Alright,” Herbert murmured. “A little while longer; it took us long enough to get out here.” He looked up, eyebrow raised, a spark of something in his eyes that Stephen had not the familiarity with to name, but shone with light, all the same. “But just a little while. I really do hate the cold.”

Smiling lightly, Stephen told him, “That’s fine by me.”

He would take this closeness with both hands, where he could find it.


End file.
